The Reserve Bank of India on Monday said that 97.4% of Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes that were in circulation as of May 2023 have been returned to the banking system. The remaining Rs 2,000 banknotes continue to be legal tender.

On May 19 last year, the central bank had announced that it was withdrawing the Rs 2,000 notes from circulation and set September 30, 2023, as the deadline to exchange them at banks across the country. The deadline was later extended to October 7, 2023.

On December 1, 2023, the Reserve Bank of India announced that Rs 9,760 crore worth of Rs 2,000 denomination currency notes had not been deposited or exchanged. As of December 29, 2023, this amount now stands at Rs 9,330 crore.

For comparison, the total value of Rs 2,000 banknotes in circulation amounted to Rs 3.56 lakh crore on May 19, 2023.

Various banks stopped exchanging Rs 2,000 notes on October 7, but the facility remains available at the Reserve Bank’s 19 issue offices across the country. These are centres where the public can exchange old, soiled and mutilated notes and coins. They are located in major cities including Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Indians living and holding bank accounts in the country can continue to send Rs 2,000 notes through any post office in the country, to the Reserve Bank’s Issue Offices. The money will then be credited to their bank accounts.

The Rs 2,000 banknotes were issued after the Centre’s decision in November 2016 to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. They were abruptly withdrawn from circulation in what the government claimed was a move to fight corruption.

Several persons, many of them elderly, had died while standing in long queues to exchange their money. As millions of families were left stranded with no cash, many even killed themselves after failing to exchange old notes for valid currency.